October 16, 2000 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITIís Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.

BIOSIS (http://www.biosis.org) has announced the release of MethodsFinder 2.0 (http://www.methodsfinder.com), its Web database of laboratory methods for life-science researchers. "MethodsFinder 2.0 will give our customers access to thousands more full-text methods from Web pages and gray literature, tens of thousands more records in the database, and an enhanced search engine," said Linda Sacks, senior vice president of marketing and sales for BIOSIS.

Life-science researchers have turned to the Internet as a place to find and exchange laboratory techniques. As a result, more laboratory methods and related material are available on the Web than ever before. "Unfortunately, searching the Web can be tedious, and reliable results are often elusive," said Sacks. "MethodsFinder 2.0 provides a centralized location where users can expect to find methods and protocols from around the Web, expertly indexed and frequently updated." In addition, MethodsFinder 2.0 also maintains a growing archive of protocols from the traditional life-science literature.

The indexing, done by experienced life-science professionals, captures unique information, including method name, reagents used, and equipment used. It builds on the strength of BIOSIS' relational indexing, which is context-sensitive and uses natural language. Search options include simple and advanced searching, and a browsable index. The service is priced at a group or institutional level, with simultaneous logons. A 60-day, free trial subscription to the database is available.

Source: BIOSIS

Factiva Launches Content Solution for Oracle Portal

Factiva (http://www.factiva.com) has announced that it has delivered on its previously announced strategic partnership with Oracle Corp. by launching Factiva Module for Oracle Portal, a service that will allow Oracle Portal customers to integrate access to more than 6,000 sources of news and business information. Oracle Portal is an Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) that offers companies the ability to integrate various "portlets" or interface components into one interface, giving users a single point of access for their information needs. The Factiva Module enables company administrators to place news anywhere in their Oracle Portal without having to write code.

According to the company, with Factiva Module for Oracle Portal, end-users can easily conduct research, set up news folders, browse top headlines, and get company information via a link to Dow Jones Interactive, the premium business intelligence service offered by Factiva. Companies using Factiva Module for Oracle Portal will have the choice of subscribing to a range of content offered by Factiva. The specific content sets available through the service include Business Newsstand, Publications Library, Company Quick Search, and Custom Clips.

Factiva Module for Oracle Portal is available for a quarterly content fee. This fee is determined by which of the four portlet options users choose and by how many people are given access to each portlet. A minimum of 50 users is required.

Through Factiva's Web site (http://www.factiva.com/oracle), users can register for a free, 30-day trial of Factiva Module for Oracle Portal. The service requires the installation of Oracle Portal 3.0 and Oracle 8i release 8.1.6 (or above). For more information, visit Oracle (http://www.oracle.com/portals). Factiva also offers a range of integration products for intranets that run on other platforms, including Factiva Publisher, Factiva Links, and Factiva Developer.

Source: Factiva

ebrary Snags Key Investors for Pay-Per-Use Service

ebrary, a company founded in February 1999 to establish an online research library, has announced an unprecedented joint investment by three leading publishing and information services companiesóRandom House, Inc., Pearson, and The McGraw-Hill Companies. This represents the first time these three market leaders have made a mutual investment in the same company. Terms of the agreement between ebrary and the investors were not disclosed. The ebrary service is scheduled to launch this fall and can be found at http://www.ebrary.com.

According to the company, ebrary is creating a collection of authoritative and valuable content, encompassing books, journals, maps, periodicals, and digitally archived material, most of which was previously inaccessible via the Web. Membership is free; however, nonmembers are allowed to search and view content but aren't able to purchase it. ebrary patrons may utilize advanced search technologies to better find the information they need. ebrary's InfoTools plug-in enables researchers to directly access supplementary information from the Internet including definitions, translations, encyclopedic references, and maps. ebrary.com uses Adobe PDF.

ebrary will also provide patrons with a new way to acquire information, by enabling the copying of text or printing of pages for a photocopier-like fee. In this manner, ebrary will offer publishers, authors, and information providers brand-new revenues. By increasing the exposure of copyright-protected material, ebrary will encourage the purchase of either the physical or electronic version of titles viewed from a choice of online or local bookstores. With the ebrary model, participating publishers and information providers may determine the degree of access and costs associated with each of their titles.

Users will also be able to pay to securely download whole documents to disk or into e-book readers, pay to have documents printed on-demand and delivered, and purchase books and documents from vendor partners.

"The fact that this is the first-ever co-investment by three major publishers in this space demonstrates the broad range of support for ebrary's model and philosophy," said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. "ebrary is now poised, with the help of our partners, to finally make the content of books, periodicals, and other traditionally printed documents accessible to everyone on the Internet in a manner that benefits publishers, libraries, booksellers, and Internet users, while protecting the authors' copyrights."